I wonder what his salary was? Possibly 140 mill over a certain number of years?

unless it was supposed to be his salary over the course of approx 280 or more years, it seems insane to me. :)

gee i only got a weeks pay last time i got canned. wasnt even close to 140 mil tho

Your right 140 mil is insane, I'll never make that money working 60 hours a week for the rest of my life, let alone make it for doing my job porrly.

Here's an article on said subject.

excellent article. interesting that the guy who helped put together the whole thing STILL underestimated the actual severance package cost.
in any case, part of this whole thing, and part of the reason i brought it up, is a sort of "gut feeling" that i've had for many years. the more research i've done in to economic systems (vs.) the reality of the global market place, especially in the u.s., the more i've felt that there's some giant (invisible) "hole in the bucket". now of course, i'm by no means qualified to talk socio-economics in any potent sense, but that feeling of a big leak somewhere is really hard for me to deny or to shake off.
the gap between the rich and the poor is a cliche, but a powerful one. i mean, you look aroung the country, look around the world, and you then you read an article about a single person getting paid more than the annual GNP of any of the 12 poorest countries in the world (http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/infopays/rank/PNB2.html) for BEING FIRED FOR NOT BEING COMPETENT ENOUGH, and how can you not think, "hmmm. something isn't right here"
then you factor in the notion that even in america, home of the most privileged people on earth on average, a larger and larger segment of the "middle" class is becoming less and less capable of paying for life and death things like health insurance, and i can only just barely keep from gettin sick.
and THIS GUY (and many many others) gets (hundreds) of millions of dollars simply because he sucked at his job?!
whoa. sorry. i'm getting light headed. :)

And people wonder how revolutions get started...

yeah, but i've never known a revolution to live up to its claims...
has lead me lately to pursue very passionately the notion of giving inherently interpretable mass to the center. still not sure what i mean by that though...

i agree with heterarchy, this stuff absolutely enrages me.

and it happens all the time.

just recently i remember reading about the ceo at morgan stanley, he did a shitty job and the company fired him. he still got a $40 million lump sum buyout and an annual stipend of $250k per year. the sense of entitlement that these people have is apalling. it really makes me question the notion of meritocracy in america and it is very disheartening.

it literally makes me want to hurt these people. and an tempted as i am to pull out a guillotine (sp?) and make a very public example of them for all those other greedy, rich bastards, i am actually more inclined to just cripple them. you know, let them see how great all that money is when they can no longer walk and have to live their lives in pain. these are shitty things to say, but it really irks me.

maybe a revolution isn't needed, but this is the one example that i can think of where i am ethicly comfortable directing violence towards someone. it somehow seems appropriate for the mases to march down to the mansions and throw some "reality" through the windows of all those greedy types.

i'm done venting for now, but if i ever meet one of these punks, watch out...

i like your passion puddles. :)
i'll tell you one thing, if you crippled every rich corporate business whore in this country (and others if you cared to expand your circle of vengence), you'd see a major medical miracle for crippling come about really quickly. granted, 90% of people who were crippled still wouldn't be able to afford it, but it would at least be there.
but yeah, the strange thing for me is that i get pissed at these sort of situations precisely because i side myself slightly more on the capitalist side than the socialist side, despite how much i respect and admire socialism. the weird thing is that capitalism somehow ISN'T a meritocracy in the sense that it somehow seemingly should be. the reason i side slightly more on the capitalist side is because i try to recognize the reality of humanity and deal with it realistically, but then the reality ends up coming back to bite me in the arse!

also, i should admit, since i brought all this up, that i can't truthfully say that i would turn down a job including a $140000000 severence package if it were offered to me, so i don't intend to demonize the individuals themselves, merely the system that somehow provides this level of inequality.

i love how we love to hate.
i think a lot of people wouldn't give it a second thought besides "wow that's cool!"
that is also what is wrong with the scenario.

thats the kind of severence that would encourage me to get canned.

I'm with strawbeary on this. why do you even care or even wasting mental energy on this?

i'm not sure if that's how i interpreted strawberry's statement, but either way, i waste mental energy on it because it's enormously unfair. and i've always instinctively cared about what's fair, even if i knew it was naive to do so. i'm dumb like that. :)

in all honesty, i don't think i would accept that much money. although i would certainly like to have much more money than i got right now, i simply don't see the need to make so much more than anybody else. i given some thought to the things that i'd like to have and i don't see a need to be competitive with anybody else in this regard. for instance, i have no interest in a large house something of a much more modest scale could easily accomodate me and the life that i desire. although i already can afford a car, i go without one because i feel it's bullshit that everybody assumes you need one, especially here in the midwest. so in terms of a dollar figure, i'm not sure what exactly i would need but i am pretty sure it is considerably less than $140 million.

moreover, i do fault the individuals, not just the system. how could anyone feel comfortable with themselves by taking millions (for geting fired nonetheless) when so many others are working there asses off for less than $10/hour? oh, of course, the executive never interacts with those people because he knows that he has been greedy and that he'd be at risk of physical harm from all of "those people". i find all of this to be so insidious precisely because it is about the destruction of community. and although i don't have any inherent issues with capitalism or free markets (even the communists and todays socialist-leaning states still make use of capital), i do believe we all should act with some responsibility for our actions. and i'm very tired of everything (in america, at least) being rationalized away as "economics". seemingly, as long as it makes money, then we shouldn't have a problem with it?! - that's weak.

j, i'm not going to beat up anybody, let alone an old woman who wins the lottery (though lottery winners are another example of people who probably don't deserve that much money. see exhibit a, jack whittaker in west virginia), but that the level of inequality would cause me to think about it should probably give some people reason to pause for reflection.

as for this business about all those executives being worth those large salaries and buyouts, that's bullshit. i can buy the argument that a visionary like disney himself might be worth it since he created the company form nothing, but people like eisner are really just custodians of a legacy (and ovitz didn't do anything except take their money). understandably, most of those who post on archinect likely work for small, privately held firms, but having been employed in the past for a large publicly traded company (american express) where management would blather on about how much paper employees were using, i have a difficult time believing that any of these companies can really afford to be tossing such large sums at single individuals.

even from ovitz's standpoint, it's not really the best use of money. a lump sum like that will come with a massive tax bill and if at least part of his motivation is to establish wealth for his family into the future he'd be much better served by taking it in the form of some kind of life insurance policy and/or combination of trusts.

the whole thing the reeks of the mental depravity that seems to accompany having access to more money than needed. enough already, back to work for me.

Disney is just as stupid as other corpies. Most corporations are slaves to their boards, which are usually stocked with execs from other companies.

I'm with LIG- put em' on the end of a large pointy stick.

I wonder if Michael Ovitz needs an architect???

he works with michael maltzen last i heard